In the rainforest, nature uses feedback to "close
the loop." In the face of limits, feedback triggers adaptations
that lessen or make an end-run around physical constraints. In business,
companies like Coors use feedback to "close the loop," triggering
innovations that lead to new products, processes, businesses, and
profits.

When mayors speak of livability, they talk about
reducing crime, improving public education, helping kids and adults
secure better job and housing opportunities, improving the delivery
of public services, recycling brownfields, enhancing the local environment,
improving parks and libraries and making transportation systems work
for people.

Fulfilling Vice President Gore's 1998 Earth Day
commitment to expand the public's right to know about toxic chemicals
released into local communities, the EPA has proposed to increase
public reporting of such releases by almost 25 percent.

"What you are doing for brownfields -- bringing
business and communities together from the very start -- proves one
of the basic tenets of all our efforts: through partnership we can
protect both people and prosperity, our health and our economy."
-- Excerpts from a speech by Carol Browner, EPA Administrator.

Earth Day Network will use cutting-edge information
technology and traditional grassroots organizing to enlist half a
billion people around the world to challenge the power of vested interests
and protect the public interest.

It's like going into a room and forgetting what
you came for, except in this case it's the whole culture, forgetting.
We forget to ask, "What's an economy for?" En route to a
brand new American millennium, we got detoured. Price tags and bar
codes began to coat the surfaces of our lives, as every single activity
became a transaction. Eating, entertainment, socializing, health,
even religion - all became marketable commodities.

How grown up do you think humanity is? When you
look at human behavior around the world and then imagine our species
as one individual, how old would that person be? A toddler? A teenager?
A young adult? An elder?

In the long term, the economy and the environment
are inextricably linked. Today's economy depends heavily on the availability
and cost of resources. Yet, we have built an economy that values resource
consumption rather than stewardship.

In 1746 Benjamin Franklin warned, "When the Well's
dry, we know the Worth of Water." As difficult as it is to anticipate
thirst in the midst of rain, it is even harder to appreciate today
the needs of generations yet unborn, and to provide for them.

The leaders of our cities are struggling to build
transportation systems and to create communities that are livable
and provide an environment friendly to people and animals. Slowly,
awareness is growing and methods are being developed to enable us
to build self-sufficient places to live in the future.

In this updated edition of the landmark Plan B, Lester Brown outlines a survival strategy for our early twenty-first-century civilization. The scale and complexity of issues facing our fast-forward world have no precedent. With Plan A, business as usual, we have neglected these issues. In Plan B 3.0, Brown warns that the only effective response now is a World War II-type mobilization like that in the United States after the attack on Pearl Harbor. More…

Includes resources for conference and campus activity planners, for authors and environmental journalists, for educators, for nonprofit leaders and organizations, and for political leaders and green advocates. More…